A Thing About Blonds
by Wounded Melody
Summary: Edgar inquires about Setzer's preference for blonds. Implied Setzer/Edgar.


All characters, setting, etc belong to Square-Enix et al.  
I do not make any money from this fan fic.

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It was well past midnight, and long since Celes and Sabin had gone to their rooms to sleep off the alcohol, when Setzer and Edgar finally concluded their gambling match, after Setzer had won the final hand. "Damn!" Edgar flung his cards across the table, his kingly composure long since worn away by numerous glasses of fine wine and the fact that he had lost all of his gold to a man he just _knew_ was cheating somehow. Setzer chuckled softly, gathering the errant cards together with an expert hand. He picked up his wine glass and ever the gracious winner, toasted the sullen royal. The two sat in silence for awhile, draining and refilling their glasses, indulging in the small moments of peace when the airship flew in territory uninhabited by monsters. It seemed the perfect time for Edgar to ask a question that had intrigued him ever since that day at the opera house. "So, what exactly is it with you and blonds?" The question had Setzer pause with his glass in midair, an amused look slowly forming on his face. "Could you clarify, please?" He queried back, in a tone that implied he knew exactly what Edgar was referencing. "All the women you fell in love with...Maria, Celes..." he almost added "Darryl", having seen her portrait hanging on a wall, but didn't have to. "Darryl," Setzer said, his voice dropping its teasing tone. "Although, she was really more than that." He sat back, looking thoughtful, as he tried to put into words what he meant. "I mean, we could have been lovers, but she..." He waved his hand to help the words come, but with that failing, he offered instead a different way of explaining. "Let me tell you a story," the gambler began.

*******

The earliest memory he had of his mother was her holding him in her arms, the visual of her face blurry in his memory, but in sharp contrast was her blond hair. He remembered it was like golden silk, draping around him like a veil, wherein only the two of them existed. He couldn't remember his father at all, and when he somewhere around five years of age, he couldn't find his mother any more. He looked for her in every woman that passed him in the streets of the city, grabbed the hand of every flaxen haired lady and cried out "Mama!" before he could tell by their cold looks that they were not his mother. He never did find her, but he also never stopped looking.

He was raised in an orphanage, where he learned a love for card games and a talent for card tricks, which mainly consisted of cheating others out of their gold. When he was deemed an adult, he was turned out into the real world, with nothing more than two gold pieces, a deck of cards, and a long black coat given to him by an older orphan, whom he had called brother, and who had died two years ago. Using the skills he had honed throughout his youth, he soon turned his two gold pieces into ten, then twenty, one hundred, two hundred and then even more. Part was indeed skill, but more so was his slight of hand, his ability to literally hide an ace up his sleeve and to deal from the bottom and top and even middle of the deck without catching the players' eyes. For a few years he lived like a king, his winnings going towards fine meals, finer liquor, the best rooms at the best inns. But luck has its run, and one night, drunk on wine and ego, he picked the wrong people to play cards with (and even worse to cheat at said cards). A wrong slip of his hand and sharp eyes caught him in the middle of a clumsy card slip. He had lost his street wise ways from years of luxury, so that night he suffered many things that he would never speak of, and was marked across his face and body with a knife, to brand him as a cheat and a thief.

She found him in an alley, half dead and covered in fresh scars. Somehow she managed to drag him to somewhere safe, into a warm bed, clean clothes applied as bandages across his pale skin. Through the haze of pain and fever, his eyes opened for a brief moment and saw, her face was almost a shadow, but all around her was a fall of golden hair, so long that he could feel it brush against his face, cool and familiar, like he remembered so long ago, and as he fell back into the dark he thought he heard himself whisper "Mama".

A week later he was well enough to sit up and eat watered down soup, learned that he saviour was named Darryl, and that she was the captain of something called an airship, on which he was in at the very moment. By the time he had fully recovered (although he would always bear the scars) he had learned everything one needed to know about an airship and could pilot the Falcon almost as well as Darryl could. He had also gained the closest friend he had ever known since the orphanage; she was smart and beautiful and cunning, with an interest in cards as well, but with the experience he lacked to pull off full proof scams, schemes that consisted of partners. Before long they travelled to places where people did not know what his scars meant and hit the local gambling spots fast and hard, a silver haired card shark with his dazzling lady, who would charm the other players while throwing signals to the gambler. It wasn't ven a year before they had built up a small fortune and she insisted they invest it in the building of another airship--it would be his, and they would have the only two airships in the world, flying so high that every one else would look like ants beneath their bows. He couldn't have agreed with her more.

The day his airship was completed, they christened it the "Blackjack" and took it to the sky with a small crew and a large supply of food and drink. They sailed through the clouds and swooped over rooftops, flying in circles and back until the sun began to set and the ship lazily coasted beneath the stars. It was as they admired the sky and their place in it that he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips, which she returned with a smile. Yet that was all, she resting her head against his shoulder as he steered back towards a landing spot. Everything was perfect just like that.

It was a week before they found her ship, crashed into the ground and half destroyed. A frantic search of the wreck did not recover any causalities, but likewise there were no survivors. Still, he hung his head, long silver white hair hiding his tears from the others--he knew that she would never leave her ship, so if it were here, then... She had challenged him to a race, not just for the thrill of it, but to etch their names into history, to let everyone below think they could fly to the stars and back. He had agreed, and when their race started, they were neck and neck for quite awhile, until her ship surged forward in a sudden burst of speed, leaving him behind as her ship started it's climb without him. It was when he reached the spot designated as the 'finish line' and did not find her there that his heart fell and he knew something was terribly wrong.

He and his crew worked on the Falcon until it was good as new, but it would never be perfect again, not without its captain. They found an abandoned crypt a few miles away, one that had a chamber large and deep enough to store the ship within. So he landed in there, burying it as a loved one, as her, and left only an engraved stone to mark its spot. It would sleep here until it was needed again.

After the burial, he became reckless again, almost asking people to kill him as he cheated and connived in plain view. But unfortunately luck was on his side and he became famous, known throughout the lands as the flying gambler, the only card shark with an airship. All the while he unconsciously was still looking for her in every woman that passed him in the streets of every city, grabbed the hand of every flaxen haired lady and stared at her eyes before he could tell by their looks that they were not her. When he saw the opera singer Maria, he decided she was close enough, good enough, to make him now infamous, as he would swoop down to liberate her from society and entrance her with the clouds and the sky. It was all a whim really, even with Celes, though she was quite the fierce beauty, he only proposed a gamble for her hand to stoke the fury of her friends. Especially that one they had the nerve to deem a thief, who seemed especially smitten with her. If he won, then he would enjoy the marriage as long as it lasted. If not, then it would be a new adventure, another way to infamy.

*******

"And so, he found his way into the company of many strange people, a good lot, but poor card players." Setzer finished his story and the last of the liquor as Edgar sat almost dumbstruck at what he had learned. Setzer flashed him a smile, got up to finally go to bed and let the king finish absorbing what he had told him. But before he left, he leaned down to Edgar, a whisper's breath away from his face and said "I still have a thing for blonds" before pressing a kiss to the other's lips. He was out of the room before Edgar had even started to blush, and headed down the candlelit corridors towards his room. At the last moment he decided to head into the King's quarters instead to wait, because he always liked a gamble and tonight he felt especially lucky.


End file.
